Accidental drowning in swimming pools and natural bodies of water is a leading cause of death for people of all ages around the world. Drownings most commonly occur in recreational settings. The odds for a fatal unintentional drowning are particularly elevated for children, weak swimmers and non-swimmers. While thousands of drowning deaths are recorded each year in the U.S. alone, there are exponentially more hospitalizations due to near-drowning injuries. A large percentage of near-drowning victims suffer severe and permanent neurological disabilities, the effects of which often result in long-lasting psychological and emotional trauma for the victim, his or her family and their community. These injuries are known as “submersion injuries”.
Submersion injuries mostly occur when least expected, often due to an unintentional slip or fall into a body of water. These accidents often happen while in the presence of others, although the victim often goes unnoticed for a period of time. The National Safe Kids Campaign (or, “NSKC”) has reported an average of eighty-eight percent of children (under the age of fourteen) were under some form of supervision when they drowned. Once the victim's head is below the water level, drowning or submersion injuries can occur within seconds.
Supervision of children, weak swimmers, and non-swimmers (an average of three-quarters of drowning victims in the U.S. did not know how to swim) around any body of water is an essential preventive strategy, but inevitable lapses make supervision alone insufficient. There are a variety of flotation aids available on the market, but typical life preservers, or personal flotation devices (“PFDs”), often prove too bulky and uncomfortable for the wearer to feasibly use on a regular basis. In fact, according to the NSKC, an average of ninety-seven percent of children who drowned in pools or open bodies of water were not wearing a PFD at the time of the drowning. Over the years, inflatable technologies have been incorporated into PFDs in attempt to minimize the bulk in protective flotation devices.
Conventional flotation devices typically use compressed gas, chemical reactions, air/water pressure, electric motors, or manual/oral means to inflate an airtight bladder to create added buoyancy for a distressed victim in water. Inflatable bladders have been incorporated in vests, shirts, pants, backpacks, wetsuits, helmets, hats, swim shorts, belts, armbands, jackets, necklaces, and waist packs.
A disadvantage of many conventional inflatable flotation devices is they require a person in distress to manually actuate the inflating mechanism. While it may be simple to manually inflate the device in a non-emergency situation, the stress and panic associated with emergencies often prevent a person from being able to perform the simplest of actions. Thus manually-actuated flotation devices are not always useful in an emergency situation.
Flotation devices that include automatic water-activated inflators are known, but these devices are prone to inflating when they should not. They often inflate when it is raining or when they are simply splashed. Accordingly, when one wants to enjoy time around water and even splash in water without worrying about inflating the PFD he or she is wearing, these conventional devices are undesirable.